Every few months, my father calls me out of the blue, informs me that he's at a video store and asks what he should rent. What he really means is, "Your mother is working tonight, so what should I watch that's fun and violent and won't require a lot of brain cells?"

"The Substitute" was a winner. So was "Under Siege" and "Under Siege 2: Dark Territory." Patrick Swayze's "Road House" is the "Citizen Kane" of this genre.

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Definitely add "Punisher: War Zone" to the queue. Assuming you can appreciate the high level of gore and assorted sadistic weirdness, the action is satisfying and the dark story is close to the tone of its Marvel Comics source material. Most important, it's a movie made by a filmmaker who knows both her audience and her limitations. Budget constraints and other factors ensured that director Lexi Alexander was going to make a B movie, so she embraces its B-movie qualities and crafts a memorable piece of entertainment.

This is the third and by far the best "Punisher" movie, which all focus on Frank Castle, an ex-soldier who turns ruthless vigilante after his family is executed by mobsters. In the new film, Castle (Ray Stevenson) accidentally shoots an undercover FBI agent during a revenge killing spree. This results in a crisis of conscience, a few kidnappings by the bad guys and lots of blood getting splattered across New York City.

The past two "Punisher" movies - starring Dolph Lundgren and Thomas Jane - spent too much time with the setup. Alexander wisely crams Castle's origin story into about 14 seconds of exposition and gets on with the carnage. From there, this is truth in advertising at its best. People get punished. In a war zone. The only way to make the title more accurate would have been to call it "Punisher: War Zone: Massive Head Wounds." Exploding craniums seem to be the specialty of Alexander, a German-born director who is also a champion kickboxer.

None of the above is sarcasm, by the way. It's so easy to screw up this kind of movie - a director must instinctively know when to hold back and when the acting and action should be completely over the top. Mostly, Alexander chooses over the top. If one character in "Punisher: War Zone" had a fake-sounding New Yorker voice or exaggerated Irish brogue, it would have been a distraction. But everyone in this movie speaks in a really bad accent, and then it becomes part of the fun. It seems as if hundreds of bad guys die, and it's a tribute to the creativity involved that no two are blown away in the same manner.

Which brings us to the primary villains, Jigsaw (Dominic West) and Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison). The writing in "Punisher" doesn't approach the greatness of "The Wire," so West goes the other way and plays the character as a cartoonish farce. Hutchison balances this well by giving us a Joker homage, smashing lots of things with his head and pulling people's kidneys out with his bare hands. In many ways, "Punisher: War Zone" is Batman for Dummies. Or better yet, Batman for Directors Who Don't Have Christian Bale or a $200 Million Budget.

"Punisher: War Zone" isn't perfect, even by B-movie standards. Beyond Jigsaw and Loony Bin Jim, the bad guys have all the menace of those "Home Alone" burglars. Some of the dialogue is both cryptic and ridiculous. ("I'll see you in hell," a friend who is about to die tells Castle. His response: "If I see you in hell, I'll kick your a- out.") And when Castle visits a gunsmith played by Wayne Knight to buy some weapons, at least one person in your audience is bound to ruin the moment by shouting "Newman!"

But the positives far outweigh the negatives in this film. Alexander is helped by veteran martial arts choreographer Pat E. Johnson, who has an old-school approach that doesn't involve obscuring the action with quick edits. (Bonus Pat E. Johnson trivia: He played the referee in "The Karate Kid.") Meanwhile, Stevenson has only two expressions - brooding and sad, and brooding and angry.

Really, it's one more than he needs.

-- Advisory: This film contains strong language, drug use and brutal violence and gore, including a character who fixes his broken nose with a pencil - which is the second-coolest thing a bad guy has done with a Faber-Castell No. 2 in the movies this year (Confused? Ask a friend who's seen "The Dark Knight").